The season of proms, garden parties and weddings is upon us and that means the pressure to land the perfect dress — with the right style, fit and price — can be as exhausting as strutting in five-inch stilettos.

If you do find a winner, the question is: Will you ever wear it again or will the frock be relegated to the back of the closet with the other castoffs?

This stress was the impetus for Kristy Wieber and Lisa Delorme to launch Rent frock Repeat (RentfrockRepeat.com), an online designer dress rental company similar to a tuxedo rental shop for men only with much more variety.

"We were in a situation we find our customers in," says Wieber. "We had to go to a wedding and we had been complaining that we didn’t want to spend another few hundred dollars on a dress that was just going to sit in our closet. And it was a wedding where we knew all the people, so we couldn’t really wear something that we had already worn."

Wieber and Delorme met while working at the Art Institute of Toronto. They became fast friends and knew they wanted to start their own venture together.

A light bulb went off when they realized there was a gap in the market when they couldn’t find an online dress rental company in Canada. The friends found a few U.S.-based dress rental sites, but they didn’t ship to Canada.

They launched Rent frock Repeat on May 23, 2011, and now have more than 12,000 members and growing. They have a showroom in Toronto, but their business is mostly online.

Delorme says their average customer is between 25 to 60 years old with heavy social calendars for business or personal reasons, or both.

"We have a girl that rents from us because she wears our dresses during the day with a blazer for business presentations and then she can go to an evening function with it," says Delorme, a former Ottawa resident, who says their dresses have been rented out for major invents, including the Oscars, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and the recent Junos in Ottawa.

To rent, you must sign up for a free membership; then you log on, click "rent frocks" and browse dresses by availability, style, colour, designer and body shape. Once you’ve found a dress, select your preferred size and backup size — they send a second dress to ensure proper fit. Provide shipping details and the date by which you need the dress. They suggest the dress arrive two days before your event to allow enough time to co-ordinate accessories.

To return the dresses, place them in the prepaid return envelope and drop in the mail.

Dresses are available between size 0 and 16. They also plan to start carrying plus sizes.

To restock their closets, Wieber and Delorme shop when they go to fashion weeks in New York and Toronto. They hope to extend those shopping sprees to Paris, Milan, and London.

They carry close to 30 designers, including Anna Sui, Badgley Mischka, Cynthia Rowley and Pink Tartan, but at the end of the day, they’ve found what people are most concerned about is not necessarily brand, but the fit.

"They just want a dress that makes them look tall and thin," says Delorme. "They are focused on looking good, but whether the label says Mischka or Adam, they don’t really care."

A dress can retail for $895, but rent for $75 for four days; or $120 for eight days. A $3,500 silk gown can be rented for $350 for four days. There’s also an option to rent for eight days or longer, say, if you’re going on vacation.

This concept may be especially attractive for Canadians living in more remote locations. For example, if you live in a small town with only one dress shop, you risk arriving at an event wearing the same dress as someone else. This is a chance to stand out without having to travel to a major city to shop.

"We ship anywhere in Canada," says Delorme.

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